Limekiller!

It was here, in another moment only, it was there: on the trail; there: the trail’s other, farther branch.

Farther.

Thank God.

For this time there had been no flash: he simply saw it. It had not been there, it could not have been there, it could not be there now, as he melted against the side of the vast tree, no such thing could be, there was no such thing; he lay still asleep somewhere and if he only could force himself to, in a second he would be awake; he could not force himself to: it was the jumby. The jumby paused. It moved on a moment more; again it paused. He now heard it sniff. And mutter. His legs melted too, now, fortunately quite slowly, and so now, besides the silkv-tree, there was a shrub between him and it. It, with its head reminiscent of the Things in one of Goya’s madtime paintings: had Goya gone mad? Had Goya seen… it…?

Limekiller saw the head move, even as he shuddered at the sound of that sniff. and of the frightful mutter which the parrot had mimicked. “indescribable?” by no means — one would not wish it described too well. The jumby muttered and the jumby sniffed. What had it smelled? — what was it trying to smell? And the sudden sullen thought that it might be trying to smell him… his own body. arm-pits, rump-crack, crotch, and all his eternally odorous human body howevermuch washed. did him (John Limekiller was his body’s name) no good at all.

The head, so human if bestial, so bestial if human, so. something else as well. the head moved. The nostrils, if that was what they were, sank into the sunken snout… if that is what it was. or nose. had it been like that, so, or anything like so, in life… or was it the sunken snout of decay, of death, of.

If it were not smelling for him, for what was it smelling? it had been smelling for him. Could it smell him, then, he, himself, himself alone? or his sw eat, his glands, microdrops of his urine and traces remnant of his stool? could it even, now, and was it even now trying to, smell Bathsheba on him as well? the tobacco he sometimes smoked and that other herb he sometimes smoked? the Indians said the beasts of venery could smell not only tobacco but that other venery; hence perhaps why they burned copal-gum before beginning to spoor… no copal here, too late for that, too late for any and for all — could it smell Bathsheba on him as well? Iniquity, transgression, and sin. Bathsheba’s boughten perfume, God knows how cheap, but use it she would. smell her body. on his? and was he here and now to pay by the wrath of some god or some facet or the one One God, for any act of unhallowed copulation which had left its traces though at the latest two days old, or three, One God in Three, traces left upon and onto him like as letters of and in fire: could it smell his sperm? his rum? his -

Limekiller smelled it now, and, ah God that was something, how it smelled! But even as he crouched and tried to contain every single one of his body’s contents, he relished (of a sudden) the faint it was faint, but it was. oh! — notice of the jumby’s stench. more now, he relished it than the, if only in memory, so-called perfume, perfume unbought in bottles, of a woman’s flesh. not invariably such a sweet perfume (was his? his own fierce flesh, though since, yes, washed) and not always a purchased perfume; oh he relished this horrid, however-faint, odor more than the sweetest scent he had ever smelled: for he knew that if he could smell the jumbv, then the faint breeze came from the other side of the jumby: hence the jumby could not smell him.

Was he then or had he ever been a Roman Catholic he might have risk or not then crossed himself. Crouching in the alien bush he regretted every single regret he had ever had about Canada, would have buried himself forever in the freezv winter mantle of Our Lady of the Snows. and ah God how he would have given anything. anything?. almost anything. his testicles?. one testicle: at least… to be back there now, at its worst. what was its worst compared to here and now and this? He would face up to, and with penitence or joy, every life lost that day upon the Plains of Abraham: to be back there, there. and not here. here.

The jumby’s bestial head moved slightly toward Limekiller’s direction, he felt his left hand jerk slightly, saw some faint rictus (as he crouched behind the immense silkv-tree) move that horrid bias- phemy of a face, saw that face turn away with a jerk of its own.